Ghost Recon Future Soldier is right around the corner, but you need a Ghost Recon refresher. We're inviting you to a Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 co-op night on to make sure you're ready. The event will take place on Xbox Live, starting at 8 PM CDT on Wednesday, May 16th. Make sure you head on over to the event's thread on the forums for more details. Leave your gamertag in the thread and find other people to meet up with there. Staff members will be sending out invites, so keep an eye out for us.

Watching trailers and gameplay footage are great ways to scope out a game, but wouldn’t you like to test Diablo III out yourself before you invest? Blizzard has you covered. Players are now able to try out the long-awaited game without having to purchase it first.

Happy Monday, people! We have a nice selection of co-op games coming out this week. An iconic PC franchise returns to the spotlight, the XBLA unleashes bullet hell, and the PSN is holding a rave in your living room. Enjoy!

This month's installment of MMOCO is a bit of a philosophical edition. Stuff has certainly gone down within the last month in the MMO department, but it's kind of a steady murmur. And as I sat here, trying to figure out what to focus on for this month's edition, it struck me that we MMO players are in the middle of a pretty great time of innovation and change of the genre.

Welcome to Episode 4 of Good Coop. Bad Coop. - a tale of two three friends who love playing games together. After taking a break from from killing insects in Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon in the last season, our co-op friends are ready to try their hands in another game - Call of Juarez: The Cartel.

Happy Saturday.  Welcome to another new edition of Beyond Co-Op, the weekly column that rounds up some of the interesting industry news that doesn't strictly pertain to co-op. This week we have a selection trailers and release date news.  Here's what we have on tap:

Japanese developer CAVE's latest shoot-em-up Akai Katana hits stores this Tuesday, May 15 courtesy of Rising Star Games' newly-opened US branch. Bullet hell shmups like Akai Katana are notoroiously difficult, filling the screen with hundreds of enemy bullets at once. Rising Star knows this and has considerately created an orientation trailer, explaining just how the gameplay works. It won't make your reflexes any faster, but at least you'll know how to use the ship's various attacks and Phantom mode transformation before you play.

As 1996 drew to a close, a new chapter in videogame history was beginning. On December 31st of that year, Diablo was released. It was a smash hit, and forever altered the gaming landscape. Diablo was a hybrid, blending action and RPG elements together, and it was incredibly fun to play, especially in cooperative mode with a few friends. Today, we’ll take a look at each game and expansion in the series, tracking the evolution of Diablo in anticipation of the launch of Diablo 3 next week.

Within 24 hours, Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition has broken the XBLA record for the most sales upon release, claiming the hill over RedLynx’s enormously addictive title, Trials Evolution. Although this is quite an accomplishment for any developer, others feel that the game’s success was propelled by Microsoft favoritism.

Earlier this week we brought you some crazy videos featuring the three Rin assassin sisters from Anarchy Reigns. Today, we have two dozen more screens from the multiplayer fighting game. Most of the game's impressive roster is well represented. Jack Cayman and Co. are dishing out pain by the bucketload. I don't know what's happening in the header image, but Durga's mechanical foot looks like it means business. 

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier launches in 11 days. Are you ready for some DLC news? Yes, you heard me right, Ubisoft has DLC slated for a July release.  

The staff has Diablo on the brain.  And with good reason.  Diablo 3 hits next week so must of us our doing our best warm-up routine - playing Diablo 2, Torchlight 2 or anything else that reminds us of how to click a mouse.